Endless Thread

By WBUR

Technology

What's Endless Thread about?

Hosts Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson dig into the internet's vast and curious ecosystem of online communities to find untold histories, unsolved mysteries, and other jaw-dropping stories online and IRL.

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LAST EPISODE

NPC Streams! So Good! Mmm, ...

12.01.2023

Earlier this year, TikTok livestreamers began mimicking lifeless "nonplayable characters," or NPCs, by repeating motions and phrases like in a video game. Then, people started paying them to keep doing it. Like the show? Help us out! Donate at https://wbur.org/podpower. ...

Endless Thread episodes:

12.01.2023 NPC Streams! So Good! Mmm, So Good! Earlier this year, TikTok livestreamers began mimicking lifeless "nonplayable characters," or NPCs, by repeating motions and phrases like in a video game. Then, people started paying them to keep doing it. Like the show? Help us out! Donate at https://wbur.org/podpower. ...
11.24.2023 The Vault (from the vault) We're going underground into what might be the most important vault in the world. What's inside? A treasure that originates with a Russian scientist during WWII.
11.17.2023 Women are from Venus, men are from... the Roman Empire? Within a few months, the question "how often do men think about the Roman Empire?" conquered Instagram, TikTok and countless group chats — and then morphed into something else. What links this to other memes of the moment? Do all ...
11.10.2023 The Grand Can-Spiracy In 1909, the Arizona Gazette ran an article titled "Exploration in Grand Canyon." It said that an explorer by the name of G.E. Kincaid went into the National Park for the Smithsonian and found caves full of mummies and ancient ...
11.03.2023 Introducing ICYMI: "How a Substack Revived the Dracula Fandom" This episode is brought to you by Slate's ICYMI podcast. Co-hosts Rachelle Hampton and Candice Lim talk to writer Cyrena Touros about Dracula Daily, a newsletter that emails bite-sized passages from Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel to more than 235,000 readers. ...
10.27.2023 Endless Dread: Campfire Chills Gather round the fire with us for three hair-raising tales from the internet. For the finale of our series "Endless Dread," we explore stories of haunted woods, computer bugs, and mysterious hole to the unknown. Like the show? Help us ...
10.25.2023 Episodes We Love: Listener beware… it’s ‘Goosebumps The Musical’ “Goosebumps” book fans and musical theater fans, unite! In this episode, Amory and producer Quincy introduce you to “Goosebumps The Musical” and find out what it might take to get it to Broadway (hint: you can help!). This episode originally ...
10.20.2023 Freaky Furby Friday Alert: Furbys have invaded "Endless Dread!" They're having a bit of a moment. In this episode, producers Jacob Garcia and Quincy Walters dig into the creepy and paranormal corners of Furby internet — from haunted Furbys, and cursed ones to ...
10.13.2023 The Spider Web With new and exotic species available at the click of a button, the digital age forever changed the multimillion-dollar arachnid industry. What has that meant for spiders? Credits: This episode was written and produced by Dean Russell. Mixing, sound design, ...
10.09.2023 Introducing 'The Gun Machine' Ep. 1: The U.S. gun industry's surprising origin story Hey, threadheads. It's a different day than we'd normally be in your feed, and we HAVE... something different for you! It's the first episode of a new series from WBUR, our home station, of course, and The Trace. It's called ...
10.06.2023 Find A Grave: Social Media Icon Host Ben Brock Johnson and producer Quincy Walters go to an historic Boston cemetery to try out findagrave.com — a volunteer-generated database of millions of graves throughout the world. At the cemetery, Ben and Quincy have a hard time finding ...
09.29.2023 Dune Boy Back in 2013, the sand dunes of Michigan City, Indiana swallowed a six-year-old boy. It took rescuers nearly 4 hours to dig him out of 12 feet of sand. It was a phenomenon that scientists hadn't studied in-depth. But Facebook ...
09.22.2023 The online legacy of 'To Catch a Predator' Back in 2004, NBC’s 'To Catch a Predator' captivated millions of viewers as it followed a vigilante group called Perverted Justice, which has a goal to thwart pedophiles searching the internet for minors. Adult volunteers go online to pose as ...
09.15.2023 Lofi Girl The popular YouTube channel Lofi Girl provides a 24/7 livestream of chill beats to relax and study. Endless Thread producer Nora Ruth Valerie Saks and co-host Ben Brock Johnson look at how the Lofi Girl phenomenon has expanded into a ...
09.08.2023 Meet the Gen Zs archiving the Muzak of the Twin Towers On Discord and YouTube, hundreds of Gen-Zers are teaming up for the purposes finding and archiving the Muzak (aka elevator music) that played in the plaza and lobby and mall of the Twin Towers. On this 22nd anniversary of 9/11, ...
09.01.2023 Artist: Known The cover art for the 1976 paperback edition of Madeleine L'Engle's classic sci-fi/fantasy novel "A Wrinkle in Time" — featuring a rainbow-winged centaur and a green, glowering, red-eyed face — is iconic. And yet, for nearly 50 years, no one ...
08.25.2023 PARKS! Pt. 4: Death Sea A Redditor proposed a quick fix to one of humanity’s greatest threats. But the real threat may be our fixation with quick fixes. Credits: This episode was written and produced by Dean Russell. Mixing and sound design by Emily Jankowski. ...
08.18.2023 PARKS! Pt. 3: Close Encounters with Mato Tipila As of late, Endless Thread co-host Ben Brock Johnson has been obsessed with a rock in Wyoming, a lot like the protagonist of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But you won't find Ben in the kitchen, making a replica ...
08.11.2023 PARKS! Pt. 2: Slime Mind Two years ago, he didn’t even know slime molds existed. Now, he may be the internet’s most famous slime savant. Co-hosts Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson take a walk in the park with Regular Slime Guy. Credits: This episode ...
08.04.2023 PARKS! Pt. 1: Social media gone 'wild' "To avoid crowds, visit areas that are less crowded." These comically obvious, wise words come from the Twitter account — ahem, X account — of the National Park Service, who has been hitting it out of the park lately (get ...
07.28.2023 Best of Summer: MEMES: Scumbag Steve If there is an OG meme in which a human is the star, Scumbag Steve is it. He spread across the internet like wildfire in 2011 as a universal representation of dudes who are the worst. And, like any person ...
07.26.2023 Best of Summer: Goblins, Toenails, and Beach Rap In times like these, you've got to take joy wherever and however you can get it. Amory and Ben swap unexpected sources of joy they've bumped into recently — from a goblin-themed Reddit post, to the scariest toe talons on ...
07.24.2023 Best of Summer: The Loudest Sound Imagine if an explosion in California was so loud that it could be heard in New York City. This is the story of a real event that was just as loud — the loudest sound ever recorded in human history. ...
07.17.2023 Best of Summer: The 100-million-year origin story of laughter and humor The first documented bar joke was copied onto a clay tablet 4,000 years ago in the ancient language of Sumerian. Scholars have translated it, but the meaning remains lost. After the Twitter account @DepthsOfWiki posted the joke in March, thousands ...
07.14.2023 Best of Summer: What makes the world’s first bar joke funny? No one knows. What makes the world’s first documented bar joke funny? No one knows. In a tweet that garnered thousands of responses in March, the Twitter account @DepthsOfWiki posted about a 4,000-year-old proverb written on a clay tablet. The line, which experts ...
07.07.2023 Best of Summer: Swimming Hole - The man, the myth, the leap In this summer-y episode of Endless Thread, Ben and Amory take a leap of faith (or do they?) to the depths of an upstate New York swimming hole with a legend surrounding it that's almost as shadowy as exact it's ...
06.30.2023 Pup Play “Which one of you freaks hijacked the south Boston green space google maps for your furry photo shoot?” Earlier this year, a Redditor was trying to find the person who uploaded pictures of himself posing in a dog mask and ...
06.28.2023 'Going Dark': Reddit's API Changes Reddit is restricting the use of third-party apps. More than 8,000 subreddit communities shut down in protest — including r/Blind, which says the change will drastically reduce accessibility. In this special episode, co-host Ben Brock Johnson speaks with two moderators ...
06.23.2023 Deepfake Law 101 Since the creation of deepfakes in 2017, the AI-powered technology that swaps faces into videos has become commonplace, particularly in pornography. Using someone's image without their consent to create porn can have damaging effects, emotionally and physically. But no federal ...
06.16.2023 Treasure in the Woods Since the pandemic, foraging has exploded in popularity. Younger generations are embracing (or romanticizing) the great outdoors with trends like #cottagecore and #vanlife. But our Endless Thread team decided to learn the do's and don'ts of foraging from someone who ...
06.09.2023 Encore: Randonauts r/randonauts is a fast-growing community of Redditors who use random, quantum-generated coordinates to go on real-life adventures. But what happens when those random coordinates lead you straight to a grisly crime scene? We revisit an episode that took Ben and ...
06.01.2023 OK, Lamp! This week on Endless Thread, host Ben Brock Johnson and producer Grace Tatter look at a meme inspired by supermodel Bella Hadid's call to compliment each other on attributes other than physical appearance, and ask what really makes for an ...
05.26.2023 Encore: Angel's Glow In the aftermath of the Civil War's Battle of Shiloh in 1862, something strange happened. Some soldiers' wounds started to glow. Stranger still, those with glowing wounds seemed to have better rates of survival. In 2001, a teenage Civil War ...
05.19.2023 Come to the Orchestra Can you have an orgasm from listening to music? Can you legally own more than six dildos in Texas? Endless Thread digs into several sexy questions that have taken over the internet. Note: This episode may not be suitable for ...
05.12.2023 #BlackFaeDay Once upon a time, in a magical land of Oklahoma, fairy Jasmine LaFleur wanted to create a hashtag to unite Black fairies all across the land. And she did. Since 2021, on the second Saturday of May, Black fairy enthusiasts ...
05.05.2023 Oranges and Bucket Lists This week, we have two stories about etymology. What can words teach us about culture, trade, memory, and the world around us? First up, which “orange” came about first: the fruit or the color? We also discuss the history of ...
04.28.2023 The Birds and the Bugs Do you ever listen to birds singing catchy little melodies and wonder - wait a second, do they know music theory? Can they sing in thirds and fifths? Half steps and whole steps? Do they have perfect pitch? Amory and ...
04.21.2023 Endless Thread presents Outside/In: How to build a solar-powered website What if the internet was only available most of the time? This week, Endless Thread presents an episode of Outside/In — a podcast from New Hampshire Public Radio — about a man in Barcelona who is trying to make the ...
04.14.2023 Help Us Remember Sunil Tripathi In the days after the 2013 Boston bombing, an online hunt for the perpetrators falsely accused Brown University student Sunil Tripathi. Police later discovered that Tripathi, who had been showing signs of depression, had died by suicide. Endless Thread revisits ...
04.07.2023 The Lullaby Our intrepid sound designer, Matt Reed — musician/composer extraordinaire —recently became a dad. He picked up a Glo Worm for his baby son, Sam. It's a plush musical baby toy made by Hasbro that's been around for decades. It plays ...
03.31.2023 'Stuff Your 15-Minute Cities!' What do livable and walkable urban environments have to do with "the real life Hunger Games"? And why are people in Oxford, England and elsewhere coming out in droves to protest seemingly innocuous traffic restrictions? On this episode of Endless ...
03.24.2023 Asking Science About Giraffe On a sunny day in March 2020, researchers in South Africa discovered the bodies of two giraffes. From what they could tell, the giraffes had died a few days earlier. But the cause was a mystery. To understand what happened, ...
03.23.2023 'Violation,' Part 1: Two sons, lost Why did Jacob Wideman murder Eric Kane? In 1986, the two 16-year-olds were rooming together on a summer camp trip to the Grand Canyon when Jacob fatally — and inexplicably — stabbed Eric. That night, Jacob went on the run, ...
03.17.2023 Pawn Man Evan Kail is a wise-cracking antique dealer and TikToker. Last September, his world turned upside down when one of his videos ignited an international media frenzy. In his words, the TikTok created a "perfect storm." The subject of the video? ...
03.15.2023 Endless Thread introduces Violation, a new podcast about who pulls the levers of power in the justice system We thought Endless Thread fans would want to hear this trailer for a new podcast from WBUR. Violation tells the story of two families bound together by an unthinkable crime. It explores America's opaque parole system and asks: How much ...
03.10.2023 Owl pursuits Last fall, freshmen at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill got a new neighbor: an owl. What wasn't clear was whether the owl was trying to befriend them, or catch them. Endless Thread host Ben Brock Johnson and ...
03.03.2023 Return of the Aunties It's been eight months since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and more people are relying on Reddit for help accessing abortion services than ever. Endless Thread revisits r/auntienetwork and looks at how it and other online communities are ...
02.24.2023 Aftershocks Online The people of Turkey, Syria and Lebanon are still recovering from the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that killed more than 50,000 people and injured thousands more. Two weeks later, another earthquake shook the region. Ben and producer Quincy Walters talk about ways ...
02.17.2023 The Journeys of Two Russian Anti-War YouTubers This week, Endless Thread spends time talking with two young Russian YouTubers who've had to contend with Russia's crackdown on wartime dissent. Natasha and Zack initially gained traction on YouTube for their videos about Russian food, culture, and daily life. ...
02.10.2023 My Canadian Girlfriend Did you have a friend who claimed they were in a long distance relationship with someone really awesome and super hot...but darn it, you could never meet their girlfriend, boyfriend, or SO, because he/she/they lived in Canada? And did suspect ...

Older episodes

Endless Thread

What's Endless Thread about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Endless Thread episodes:

NPC Streams! So Good! Mmm, So Good!

The Vault (from the vault)

Women are from Venus, men are from... the Roman Empire?

The Grand Can-Spiracy

Introducing ICYMI: "How a Substack Revived the Dracula Fandom"

Endless Dread: Campfire Chills

Episodes We Love: Listener beware… it’s ‘Goosebumps The Musical’

Freaky Furby Friday

The Spider Web

Introducing 'The Gun Machine' Ep. 1: The U.S. gun industry's surprising origin story

Find A Grave: Social Media Icon

Dune Boy

The online legacy of 'To Catch a Predator'

Lofi Girl

Meet the Gen Zs archiving the Muzak of the Twin Towers

Artist: Known

PARKS! Pt. 4: Death Sea

PARKS! Pt. 3: Close Encounters with Mato Tipila

PARKS! Pt. 2: Slime Mind

PARKS! Pt. 1: Social media gone 'wild'

Best of Summer: MEMES: Scumbag Steve

Best of Summer: Goblins, Toenails, and Beach Rap

Best of Summer: The Loudest Sound

Best of Summer: The 100-million-year origin story of laughter and humor

Best of Summer: What makes the world’s first bar joke funny? No one knows.

Best of Summer: Swimming Hole - The man, the myth, the leap

Pup Play

'Going Dark': Reddit's API Changes

Deepfake Law 101

Treasure in the Woods

Encore: Randonauts

OK, Lamp!

Encore: Angel's Glow

Come to the Orchestra

#BlackFaeDay

Oranges and Bucket Lists

The Birds and the Bugs

Endless Thread presents Outside/In: How to build a solar-powered website

Help Us Remember Sunil Tripathi

The Lullaby

'Stuff Your 15-Minute Cities!'

Asking Science About Giraffe

'Violation,' Part 1: Two sons, lost

Pawn Man

Endless Thread introduces Violation, a new podcast about who pulls the levers of power in the justice system

Owl pursuits

Return of the Aunties

Aftershocks Online

The Journeys of Two Russian Anti-War YouTubers

My Canadian Girlfriend

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